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m' A TKACT FOR THE TIMES, © 

ON THE QUESTION, 



IS IT RIGHT TO WITHHOLD FELLOWSHIP FROM CHURCHES 

OR FROM INDIVIDUALS THAT TOLERATE OR 

PRACTISE SLAVERY? 



READ BV APPOIXTMKNT, BEFORE 

THE CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS' MEETING, 

OF NEW -LONDON COUNTY. CT. 

I 

REV. HENRY T . OHEEVER. 



This is true liberty, when free-born men, 
Having to advise the public, may speak free. 



flS* JOHN A. GRAY, PRINTER, Nos. 16 AND 18 JAOOB STREET, |g| 

\M-J) FIKB-I'ROOF BUILDINGS. ^wV 

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III I IHII I II I MIH'II I M I II 



A TRACT FOR THE TIMES, 



ON THE QUESTION, 



IS IT RIGHT TO WITHHOLD FELLOWSHIP FROM CHURCHES 

OR FROM INDIVIDUALS THAT TOLERATE OR 

PRACTISE SLAVERY? 



HEAD BY APPOIXT1IKXT, BEFORE 

THE CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS' MEETING, 

OF NEW-LONDON COUNTY, CT. 



BY 

REV. HENRY T. C H E E V E R . 



This is true liberty, when free-born men, 
Having to advise the public, may speak free. 



NEW-YORK: 
JOHN A. GRAY, PRINTER & STEREOTYPER, 1G & 18 JACOB ST. 

FIRE -PROOF BUILDINGS. 
1859. 



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" If these little sparks of holy fire which I have heaped together, do not give 
life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometime help to 
entertain a thought or actuate a passion." — Bishop Taylor. 



A TRACT. 



BY R E Y. H E INT R Y T. C II E E Y E R . 



Is it right to withhold fellowship from churches or from individuals that tolerate or practise 
slavery? 

The settlement of this question depends upon the answer.-; we 
allow to three other questions: First, Is the tolerating or prac- 
tising of shi sufficient ground for withholding church-fellowship in 
any case ? Second, Is slavery or slaveholding sin ? Third, What 
is meant by withholding church-fellowship ? and what ends are to 
he answered by it ? 

I. Is the tolerating or practising of sin sufficient ground for 
withholding church-fellowship in any case ? 

Our answer to this question must he, that there are two grounds 
asserted in the word of God, on which we are not only justified. 
hut required to withhold fellowship: first, important doctrinal 
errors ; second, sinful practices. 

In regard to the first as a reason for withholding fellowship, 
Paul says, in the Epistle to the Romans, 16 : 17, Mark them which 
cause divisions contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned ; 
and avoid them. Again, in 1 Tim. 6 : 3, 5, If any man teach 
otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to 
godliness, from such withdraw thyself. In the second Epistle of 
John, 10: 11, it is said, If there come any unto you, and bring 
not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him 
God-speed : for he that biddeth him God-speed, is partaker of his 
evil deeds. 

Here, then, the teaching and entertaining of doctrines contrary 
to the Gospel, are implied and declared to be a sufficient reason 
for not merely withholding, but for positively withdrawing fellow- 
ship and countenance. 

In regard to the second scriptural ground for withholding fel- 
lowship, namely, sinful practices, we find Paul saying, 1 Cor. 5:11, 



I have written unto you, not to keep company, it' any man that is 
called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a 
railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner ; with such an one, no, not 
to eat. And in '2 Thess. 3:6, 14, 15 : Now Ave command you, 
brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw 
yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly. And if any 
man obey not our word by this Epistle, note that man, and ham 
no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him 
not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. The Apostle's 
directions also to Timothy for dealing with sinners is, 1 Tim. 
5 : 20 : Them that sin, rebuke before all, that others may fear. 
And to the same import is one of the rules of Jehovah, among the 
solemn precepts of moral conduct to his ancient covenant people, 
Lev. 10 : 17 : Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and 
not suffer sin upon him. 

No one will deny that on the express authority of these passages, 
as well as on the ground of general principles, it is not only right, 
but it is a duty, to withhold fellowship from those that either 
entertain fundamental doctrinal errors, or persist in a sinful prac- 
tice. It is God's own way for his people to express their disap- 
proval of a brother's errors in doctrine or practice, or in both. It 
is, therefore, right, and we are bound to maintain it as a principle, 
the withholding of fellowship from errorists and wrong-doers, 
Avhether they be in the household of faith or not. 

II. The second question is, Does Slavery involve either doctrinal 
error, or sinful practice, or both, so as to be a ground for the with- 
holding of fellowship from those who tolerate or practise it ? 

It does involve both. Its doctrinal error, its wrongfulness as a 
principle, is what Lord Brougham called " the wild and guilty fan- 
tasy that man can hold property in man" — the principle of human 
chattelhood, that immortal man may be bought and sold — or, in 
the language of the American Slave Code itself, defining Slavery, 
(Stroud's Sketch of the Laws of Slavery,) " Slaves are to be 
deemed, sold, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be chattels 
personal, in the hands of their owners and possessors, and to all 
intents, constructions, and purposes whatever." 

This, then, is the character, this is the quality of American Slav- 
ery ; and this makes its offense so rank it smells to heaven — that 
it chattelizes immortal man. It appropriates and uses him, his per- 
sonality, himself, as a thing, or as an irrational beast of burden. 
Not that it merely appropriates and uses the services of the slave 
— a phraseology with which many persons are found blinding 
themselves to the nature of slavery — but it seizes, secures, and 



claims ownership in the slave himself. It deems, sells, takes, re- 
putes, and adjudges in law to be a chattel personal, " the slave 
and its increased It dehumanizes, so to speak, human nature 
itself; it unmans man, and holds him as a brute and his increase, 
designating such alleged property by these very terms, " the slave 
and its increase:'' 

This is the basis-principle of American Slavery, maintained in 
law, and practically governing all legal decisions in regard to it, 
that the slave is a thing, a chattel personal, from which naturally 
follows the comprehensive judgment of our Supreme Court in the 
interest of slavery, that no negro, or descendant of a negro, can 
he a citizen of the United States, and the correlate opinion 
that the black man has no rights which the white man is bound to 
respect. Of course he has no rights as a man if he is no man — if 
he is only a brute or a thing — if he is to be deemed, sold, taken, 
reputed, and adjudged, in law to be a chattel personal in the hands 
of its owner and possessor, to all intents, constructions, and pur- 
poses whatever, the slave and its inerease. 

This is the doctrinal error at the root of slavery — that pro- 
perty may be held in man. Herein lies its abstract wrongfulness. 
It is an abstract falsehood, a great doctrinal lie, for God, our great 
proprietor, never gave men property in man. He did give them 
property and dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl 
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over 
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. But he never 
gave property in man, and we can hold no property in any thing 
for which we have not a grant from God and nature. 

The right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the ac- 
quisition of property in the earth, sea, air, and all their products, 
is an inalienable right of human nature. Xone with a human 
nature are without that right from nature's God. But, on the 
other hand, no law T , or ordinance of man, or custom of antiquity, 
can confer the right of property in human nature itself. And it is 
one of the greatest enormities and crimes that can possibly be per- 
petrated, to use a man as money. But this is what American 
Slavery does in theory and practice, and this makes it "the sum of 
all villainies." And it is by reason of this, its doctrinal error, its 
evil principle, that it is both a right and a duty to withhold 
Christian fellowship from those who assert it, in themselves prac- 
tising or tolerating slavery. 

2. But, in the second place, slavery is not only wrong in prin- 
ciple, so that by authority of the word of God, we should with- 
hold fellowship from it and from its defenders, but it is Avrong in 



8 

practice, so as to cover both of the Scripture requisitions in regard 
to fellowship ? Slavery is not merely an abstract error, but it is a 
concrete sin. It is a positive outrage upon human nature itself; 
and it is the greatest wrong that can be committed against hu- 
manity, to enslave A MAN, whether that enslavement be from 
birth, or by purchase, or by actual violence and kidnapping. It is 
a violence to human nature either way, and it is an insult to 
nature's God, and to the impartial Saviour of mankind, who puts 
himself in the place of the meanest of the human brotherhood, 
and says emphatically, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
the least of these my brethren, ye hare done it unto vie. Freedom 
is man's right from God the Creator ; and to put him out of that 
right by first enslaving him, or by keeping him in the state of 
slavery when already enslaved, is a sin against God and against 
man. And for this reason, therefore, because slavery is a sinful 
practice, as well as a wrong principle, we are bound to withhold 
fellowship from churches and from individuals that practise or 
tolerate it. 

III. We are now prepared for the question : What ends 
are to be answered by withholding church fellowship on ac- 
count of slavery ? and what is meant by it ? I answer, that the 
withholding of church fellowship is always meant as a testimony 
against error and sin, in doctrine or practice, or both. And its de- 
sign is to reprove, convince, recover, and bring to repentance the 
wrong-thinker and the wrong-doer. The end to be answered by 
it in regard to slavery, is the extinction of that grievous wrong 
and sin. Our warrant for it is the word of God : Eph. 5:11: 
Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness ; but 
rather reprove them : And 1 Tim. 5 : 20 : Them that sin rebuke 
before all, that others may fear. Lev. 19 : 17 : Thou shalt not 
hate thy brother in thy heart. Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy 
neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him. 

The withholding of fellowship from the sinner is both the nat- 
ural and the revealed mode of testifying against sin. It is a divine 
precept (l Tim. 5 : 22) not to be partakers of other meris sins. 
But if we let other men's sins go without reproof, and still hold 
fellowship with them when we ourselves are aware of their wrong 
principle and wrong practice, what are we but partakers in the 
same ? The command from heaven in regard to the apostate 
Church of Rome (Rev. 18 : 4) applies also to every apostate and 
erring church or individual with whom we have to do. 

Now, the American Church South has plainly become apostate 
(it has departed from the faith) upon the great question and sin 



of slavery. For, whereas the leading Presbyterian divines foi'- 
merly held and affirmed slavery to he a sin, and the Book of Con- 
fession and of Discipline made it an offense to be proceeded against, 
now they affirm, (to use the very language of one of them,) " That 
slavery is one of the social relations of men, ordained of God. It 
is like husband and wife, parent and child, teacher and scholar, 
magistrate and citizen, captain and soldier, sovereign and people.' 1 

And whereas the Presbyterian Book of Faith and Discipline 
once expressly condemned slavery, and declared it forbidden by 
the word of God, now that testimony is left out in the printed 
Confession.* 

And whereas statesmen and ministers of the Gospel, at the time 
of the Revolution and for years after, held slavery to be a great 
wrong, and, in the language of one of them, (Patrick Henry,) 
maintained " that it is a debt which we owe to the purity of our 
religion, to show that it is at variance with the law which war- 
rants slavery" — now, both statesmen and divines of the South 
uphold slavery, and defend it from the sacred Scriptures, assert- 
ing boldly that slavery is the true condition of the black man, 
and mastership that of the white man.f 

* la the year 1*794, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the 
United States adopted this note, in their Confession of Faith, to the one hundred 
and forty-second question in the larger Catechism on the Eighth C mmandmeut: 
" 1 Tim. 1 : 10. Tlie laiv is made for man-stealers. This crime, among the Jews, 
exposed the perpetrators of it to capital punishment, (Ex. 21 : 1C ;) and the Apos- 
tle here classes them with sinners of the first rank. The word he uses, iu its 
original import comprehends all who are concerned in bringing any of the human 
race into slavery, or retaining them in it. Homuucm fares, qui servos vel liberos 
abducunl, retinent, vendunt, vel emunt ; stealers of men are those who bring off 
slaves or freemen, and keep, sell, or buy them. To steal a freeman, says G-rotius, is 
the highest kind of theft. In other instances, we only steal property ; but when 
wo steal or retain men in slavery, we seize those who, in common with ourselves, 
are constituted by the original grant, lords of the earth. — Gen. 1 : 2S ; vide Poll 
S\ r nopsin in loc." 

f Formerly judicial decisions tended to the freedom and elevation of the bla k 
man : now it is held that his chatteldom so far prevails over his personality, that 
he can not exercise the right of choosing freedom, even when tendered him by his 
master. Once, wills of emancipation were favored in the South : now they are 
under the ban of law. 

And that we do not misrepresent the sentiment of the Southern Church, as 
gathered from the utterances of its representative men and periodicals, we quote 
the following from the pen of Rev. Dr. Adger in the Southern Presbyterian Review : 
" Whatever may be true or false of other nations generally — whatever of other 
Africans — as concerns those Africans who live among us, they are justly held by us 
in bondage. Towards them we have duties, over them we have rights. The 



10 

And whereas, even as late as the year 1834, only one year 
after the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society on the 
foundation-principle that slavery is sin and should therefore be 
immediately abandoned, Rev. li. J. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, 
declared : " I believe, and have long and repeatedly maintained, 
that slavery is a sin to him who in any way supports it. In 1830, 
I did refuse to sit as a corresponding member of the Synod of 
Kentucky, after that body refused to say that God's law con- 
demned slavery. To put an end to slavery, we arc bound to use 
legal means where they exist, and moral means always?' — Now, 
on the other hand, in the year of grace 1858, it is very generally 
held throughout the Southern Church, by its laity and ministry, 
that slavery is no sin, and that it is not a matter for ecclesiastical 
judgment or action. 

And whereas the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United 
States was founded, according to Mr. Lee, the historian of that 
body, with a number of express rules which stipulated that slavery 
should not be maintained in the Church ; and by a clause added 
to Mr. Wesley's original rules, expressly forbade " the buying or 
selling the souls and bodies of men, women, or children, with an 
intention to enslave them," and declared in these words " that no 
person holding slaves shall be admitted to our society, till he pre- 
viously comply with these rules concerning slavery" — whereas 
this was the sense and rule of that Church from the year 1780, it 
has now, in the year 1858, so far apostatized from the faith of its 
fathers and founders on this subject, that the General Conference 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at its late session in 
Nashville, expunged from the Book of Discipline all reference to 
the subject of buying and selling slaves, by a vote of one hundred 
and forty ayes to eight noes, in the following resolution : " Re- 

oxisting relation botween the white and the black man in these Southern States, is 
a necessary and a just and a good relation. 

" It is the best form of society possible amongst us. It is good not only for us, 
but good for them. The relation itself is the very best possible for both the races, 
thus strangely brought together in God's mysterious providence. Existing as they 
do in the midst of us, the end of this relation would necessarily be the end of all 
their wonderful progress— the beginning of their retrogression very rapidly into 
the barbarism out of which we have been God's agents in partly reclaiming them. 
And existing as they do in the midst of us, the end of this relation would be tho 
end of all ability on our or their part to dwell peaceably together. Therefore tho 
relation is good. And born under it, we and they both like it ; and under it, all 
things taken into view, wo and they constitute together perhaps tho happiest peo- 
ple in tho whole world. Such we conceive to bo the position which the South 
takes." — Southern Presbyterian Review, 1858. 



11 

solved, By the delegates of the Annual Conference of the Method 
ist Episcopal Church, South, in General Conference assembled, that 
the rule forbidding the buying and selling of men, women, and 
children, with the intention to enslave them, be expunged from 
the General Rules of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South." 

Without entering particularly into an exhibit of the complicity 
with slavery of the Baptist and Episcopal Churches, it is enough 
to say, these facts fairly present the great apostasy* of the 

* It lias surprised many that such largo numbers of slaveholders should have 
changed so radically their giound within the last twenty-five years. Previous to 
this time, the system of slavery was generally admitted by Southern men as an 
unnatural, abnormal, undesirable state of things, to be remedied as soon as circum- 
stances would allow. Now it is very generally claimed to be a system justified by 
sound policy and right reason, indorsed by conscience, sanctified by the Bible, and 
worthy of a permanent existence and general approbation. How has this great 
change in public sentiment at the South been brought about ? Perhaps we can 
throw some light on this subject. We will make the effort. 

In the year 1333, the Presbytery of Chillicothe, Ohio, adopted a strong paper, 
reprobating the system of slavery, and setting forth its intrinsic, inherent, and 
inexcusable wrongs. A copy was sent to the Stated Clerk of the Synod of Mis- 
sissippi, embracing at that time the States of Mississippi, Louisiana, and South- 
Alabama. At the meeting of the Synod in the fall of 1834, at Port Gibson, in the 
church of which Rev. Zebulou Butler, D.D., was then and still is the pastor, Rev. 
James Smiley preached the opening sermon, in which he argued the righteousness 
of slavery from the Bible. The sermon was strongly condemned by the leading 
members of the Synod, as containing false and unscriptural views. Many intelli- 
gent men belonging to the congregation, who were slaveholder-, joined in expres- 
sions of condemnation of the new doctrine. Some went so far as to say that Mr 
Smiley ought not to be permitted to preach. The same sermon was preached a 
few weeks afterwards at Oakland College, in the church of which Rev. Mr. Cham- 
berlin, the President of the College, was the stated supply. Dr. Chamberlin 
expressed his strong dissent to the views advanced, and many in the congrega. 
tion, made up chiefly of wealthy planters, were greatly displeased. Mr. Daniels, 
owner of several hundred slaves, said to Dr. Chamberlin at the door: "We hold 
you responsible for what comes from that pulpit — you are placed there to guard 
it — why do you permit such sentiments to be preached? We are all anxious 
enough to get plantations and negroes, without slandering the Holy Ghost by 
claiming the Bible justifies slavery." 

This was the beginning of Biblo slavery in this country. The year after, Mr. 
Smiley amplified his sermon into a book, now famous as " Smiley on Slavery." 
When his book was first published, his brethren of the Mississippi Synod were dis- 
satisfied with it, and gave it no countenance. The leading bookseller in Natchez 
refused to receive it on sale, and Mr. Smiley excited some odium against him by 
calling him an Abolitionist. A copy of the book found its way to the reading- 
room of a prominent hotel in New-Orleans. Several persons were discussing its 
merits, when one remarked, that " it was singular that a man of Mr. Smiley's good 
sense and scholarship could not see that he was wrong." A shrewd lawyer sitting 
by, replied that Mr. Smiley could not see his error, because ho had twenty-Jive thou- 
sand dollars lying upon each eyelid. Mr. Smiley, in the early part of his ministry 



12 

Southern Church in regard to slavery. The change in laws and 
legal decisions, which formerly went very far in construing deeds 
and wills of emancipation in favor of granting liberty to the slave, 
but now deny to the slave any civil or social right whatever, so as 
to make it impossible for him to choose liberty, although the 
choice be left him by will of his master, I will not notice* Nor 
will I enlarge upon the recent anti-Christian charge of a United 
States Judge (Leavitt) at Cincinnati, in the case of Conolly, "that 
Christian charity was not within the meaning or intent of the Fu- 
gitive Slave Law, and Christian charity would not therefore answer 
as a defense for violating the law." 

Who now shall testify against this apostasy, and reprove our 
brethren in the South on account of it, if the churches at the 
North hold their peace ? The apostasy is clear ; the departure 
from the faith of the fathers is undeniable. The changef in the 

was strongly opposed to slaver}'. At the age of thirty-eight he lost his wife. By 
;i second marriage he came into possession of slave property. For months he was 
exceedingly disturbed by the possession of this property. He said to a clerical 
friend, that the ''matter distressed him exceedingly." At length he mastered his 
scruples, and arrived at the conclusion that slavery is a divine institution. To Dr. 
Smiley belongs the honor, or dishonor, of first indorsing and defending slavery 
from the Bible. Rev. Dr. Fuller, an eminent Baptist clergyman, then of Charles- 
ton, South-Carolina, next followed ; then Dr. William Winans, of the Methodist 
Church ; tlien, and not till then, politicians chimed in, and made the welkin ring 
with the "God-ward side" of slaver}'. 

We think these facts should be preserved for future reference, and hence we 
have taken some pains to get them in an accurate and reliable form. — Traveller. 

* The Supreme Judicial Tribunal of Virginia has lately decided, in the case of 
the will of James L. Poindexter emancipating his slaves, and the decision is ren- 
dered by Judge Daniel : "That slaves have no civil or social rights, and that the 
slave can not choose between freedom and slavery, if the offer be made him by his 
master; and that consequently a slave left by his master with freedom if he choose 
to take it, can have no legal right to choose freedom, and must therefore still be a 
slave." 

f The greatness of the change at the South in favor of Slavery, astonishes all 
who have watched its progress. The New-Orleans Picayune has the following, 
which is cited as the strongest act ever passed by the Louisiana Legislature : 
"An Act to prohibit the Emancipation of Slaves. 

"Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
Slate of Louisiana, in General Assembly convened, That from and after the passago 
of this Act, no slave shall be emancipated in this State. 

"Approved, March 6th, 1857." 

The despotism of Slavery, it will thus be seen, becomes more oppressive from 
■rear to year. No slave, however worthy, can henceforth in Louisiana (and Vir- 
ginia is fast advancing in the same road) have the boon of freedom. The slave- 
holder, too, is fett;red in the use of his property. However ardent his desire tc 



13 

attitude and tone of the Southern Church toward slavery is mani- 
fest to all the world. But what we call apostasy, they call pro- 
gress. 

Is not, then, the most solemn testimony possible in regard to it, 
demanded of us ? And what expression so solemn and affecting 
as the withholding of church-fellowship from those who are in 
this apostasy ? 

But the right to remonstrate and withhold fellowship on account 
of this apostasy in doctrine and practice being admitted, a ques- 
tion arises in some minds, Is it expedient to exercise that right ? 
Would it be productive of good ? We answer, first, that in the 
true view of expediency, it is always expedient to do right. More- 
over, the exercise of the right of rebuke to our neighbor is not 
left optional in the word of God, but is expressly required in that 
authoritative precept, Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neigh- 
bor, and not suffer sin upon him. Whatever may be the presump- 
tive effect of the rebuke, w r e are in any wise to give it, and to ac- 
quit ourselves of the duty, in the fear of God. 

confer liberty on a deserving slave, the law steps in and forbids the act. And yet 
sucli States claim to be civilized and Christian ! 

By many the change is attributed to the anti-slavery agitation at the North. 
Now, mischievous as Abolitionism has been, those who make the new pro-slavery 
propagandism of the South a mere reaction from this, and maintain that but for it, 
Kentucky, Virginia, and perhaps other States, would ere this have adopted an 
emancipation policy, do Abolitionism more honor, as a power, than belongs to it. 
Abolition Societies existed from the first formation of cur Government. Benjamin 
Franklin was President of one in Pennsylvania. The eminent and conservative 
Judge Baldwin was Secretary of one in Connecticut. More potent causes than 
either G-arrisonianism or the deep Christian opposition to Slavery which manifests 
itself at the North, have brought about the sad apostasy of the South on the ques- 
tion of human freedom. 

The naming, by others, of the most influential of those causes, is often received 
with incredulity, and even with ridicule, by men who profess the highest admira- 
tion for the conservatism of Daniel Webster in the last years of his public career. 
But in his much-lauded speech of March 7th, 1850, in the Senate of the United 
States, Mr. "Webster used the following language : 

"What, then, have been the causes which have created so new a feeling in 
favor of Slavery in the South, which have changed the nomenclature of the South 
on that subject, so that from heing thought and described as I have mentioned and 
will not repeat, it has now become an institution, a cherished institution, in that 
quarter — no evil, no scourge, but a great religious, social, and moral blessing, as I 
think I have heard it latterly spoken of ? I suppose this, sir, is owing to the sud- 
den uprising and rapid growth of Cotton plantations of the South. So far as any 
motive consistent with honor, justice, and general judgment could act, it was the 
Cotton interest that gave a new desire to promote Slavery, to spread it, to use its 
Labor." 



14 

But what is the rational presumption in regard to the effect of 
such an admonition ? To this we answer : It is certain thnt it 
would be productive of good in one way, and there is every 
reason to believe that such a testimony would do good in another 
way. Its certain good would be this, that it would be the unself- 
ish, disinterested witness and rebuke, from principle and con- 
science, against evil. And this, in a world of mingled and war- 
ring good and evil, must be a benefit. The simple affirmation of 
the truth, the clear utterance of a principle, the. mere positive 
declaration of abstract right, and the honest expression of abhor- 
rence of wrong, from any quarter, but especially from any portion 
of the Christian Church, is a power in the world. It is a blow 
felt through all the kingdom of darkness, and hi'nce its recoil. 
Hence the madness evinced in the South at the assertion of the 
abstract principle that slavery is sin. A principle thrown out 
upon the world, whether it be right or wrong, is a power, because 
it is always productive of good or of evil. It has what Lord 
Bacon calls a seminal virtue and potency ; it contains in itself an 
endless power of semination. Human conduct grows out of prin- 
ciple, and principles shape and forecast facts. Principle it is that 
governs practice, right or wrong. The evil principle at the bot- 
tom of slavery, of property in man, governs in every actual case 
of slaveholding, and slavery knows that it can stand only so far 
as its principle is admitted, that it must fall when that is denied. 
Now, good men are satisfied that right principles will in the end 
prevail over wrong principles in this world, because God and his 
providence are on the side of the right and the true. It is there- 
fore never useless or inexpedient to declare such principles as a 
testimony. This, then, is the certain good that would follow from 
our testifying against slavery, by withholding fellowship from 
churches and individuals that practise or tolerate it — it would be 
a standing testimony to the truth and the right, and against false- 
hood and wrong. 

2. But in the second place, there is reason to believe that such 
a testimony would do good in another way. It would be likely 
to convince our Southern brethren of one thing at least, that we 
are earnest and sincere, and based upon principle in our opposi- 
tion to slavery. Let us, as ministers and churches, conscientiously 
withhold fellowship from those who practise and defend slavery, 
and let us make it known that we have no fellowship with them 
but to reprove them in all suitable ways, and there can hardly be 
a doubt that it would touch and trouble the Southern conscience. 
Such a standing remonstrance against their cherished iniquity 



15 

amid the solemnities of the sanctuary and at the communion 
table, could not but be felt. 

But how is it now ? Christians at the South that have fallen 
into the great Southern apostasy on the subject of slavery, do not 
believe that Christians at the North really hold them to be cherish- 
ing a great sin and wrong both in principle and practice. They 
know that an agitating and active minority in the ministry, whom 
they call ultra and fanatical, think so. But they are satisfied as 
yet that a large preponderance of the staid, conservative Christian- 
ity of the North is on their side. Their deceiving oracles teach 
them so — the Journal of Commerce their Law — the New - York 
Observer their Gospel. And they naturally refer to the late action 
of the Tract Society, and to the very general silence of the 
churches as churches upon the question of slavery, in proof of 
their position. They rationally argue that there can not be any 
deep-seated and general abhorrence of slavery upon principle, as 
a sin, where the churches not only refrain from rebuking it, but 
still proffer their fellowship to those who sustain it, by maintaining 
a correspondence with their ecclesiastical bodies, and by inviting 
slaveholding ministers into our pulpits, and slaveholders to our 
communion-tables. 

But now let these signs of fellowship be generally withheld, and 
the reason for it be given with plainness and fidelity — let the minis- 
try take and make all suitable occasions to express the convictions 
of Northern Christians in reference to slavery — let them pour 
upon it the revealing light of God's word — and let them evince :i 
hearty remembrance and perpetual sympathy with them that are 
in bonds as bound with them, so that all shall know it who hear 
them preach or pray ; and how long could this inhuman and anti- 
Christian institution stand such an assault ? How long would it be 
before that insurrection of Southern consciences would take place, 
which General Duff Green deprecated twenty-five years ago ? 
In this view it is no slander to say, that the Church in this country 
is the great bulwark of American Slavery.* And when the sup- 
port which the Church now gives to this relic of barbarism shall 
be withdrawn, by withholding fellowship from slaveholders, the 
iniquity will fall by its own weight of evil, or it will expire by 
suicide under the opprobium of mankind. 

But it is objected by some one to this reasoning and to these 

* "There is no power out of the Church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it, 
were not sustained in it. Let every religious denomination detach itself from all 
connection tvith slavery, and utter a calm and deliberate voice to the xvorld, and the 
work will be done^ — Rev. Albert Barnes. 



1(3 

results : You argue as if the truth all lay on one side, when as good 
or better men and Christians than you, are practising slavery ; 
and clearer and stronger heads than yours defend it out of the 
Scriptures as an institution of God. To this I answer : Are we so 
miserably deficient in steadfast principle ? and is it so hard to be 
certain we are right on a simple question of morals, that we are to 
be staggered in our convictions, or to be made timid and hesitating 
in the expression of them, by the array of names, and virtues, and 
piety on the side of wrong? Is the sophistry or speculation of 
all evangelical Christendom upon what is calculated to receive its 
approbation, to keep me from arriving at certainty upon a simple 
question of human rights, and the requisition of God's law ? Am 
I to be befogged and doubtful and non-committal upon the sub- 
ject of slavery, and the duty of having no fellowship therewith 
but to reprove it, because greater minds than mine are entangled 
in the web of their own sophisms, and blinded with the very ink 
which they have shed, like the cuttle-fish, to keep off their pur- 
suers? No, the truth is not always on the side of the heaviest 
artillery, or the hugest cotton-bale, or the blackest ink, or the 
most pious Jesuitism ; and you and I may be right, and we may 
know it, though Socrates and Plato, and the Man of Ross be on 
the other side. And we can say with Francis Quarles : 

" Lord, mail my heart with faith, and be my shield, 
And though a world confront me, I'll not yield." 

But it is objected again that to withhold fellowship from those 
whom we believe to be Christians, is uncharitable, and is calculat- 
ed to rend the Church of Christ. To this I answer, that so far 
from being uncharitable to rebuke sin in this way, it is the very 
requisition of Christian charity itself, which reads, Thou shalt not 
hate thy brother in thy heart, but (as in love and out of love, and 
truest charity) thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not 
suffer sin upon him. Thy very -charity towards thy sinning neigh- 
bor should lead thee to rebuke him. 

And so far from its rending the Church to withhold fellowship 
from those portions or individuals of it that practisj and tolerate 
slavery, it is the very way to unite and save it. By the sin of 
slavery tolerated, nourished, and defended by the Church, unre- 
buked by its Missionary Boards, left in peace by its Tract Societies, 
our Christianity itself has come into contempt, and American 
Protestantism (as the affectionate remonstrance of the French 
Christians to the Churches of America on the subject of Slavery 
truly declares) has become a scandal. 



17 

Now, to remove that scandal, we must protest against sin. And 
ho\\ r can we do it so effectively, how indeed at all, except by with- 
holding fellowship from those who are practising it ? Hitherto 
the Church of God in America is far from having fulfilled its mis- 
sion in the matter of slavery. It has had a work to do in the 
overthrow of that dreadful iniquity which it has shamefully 
ignored and neglected. How keen the unmeant satire of the 
venerable Humboldt, in view of the relation of Christian proprie- 
tors in America to slavery, when he says : " In our days it is 
philosophers, and not devotees, who raise the question — Is it right 
to hold slaves ? But the broader range which philosophy has 
always had makes me believe it would have been better for suffer- 
ing humanity, if this sort of skepticism had been preserved among 
the believers.'''' 

Now can we doubt that if the churches will not hear and heed 
the cry of the oppressed, God will raise up other agencies for their 
deliverance ? Indeed, He is already doing it ; and He may, in the 
process of deliverance, crimson the land with blood, through the 
acts of pro-slavery politicians and Presidents, and the decrees of 
our Judiciary, consummated successively with guilty silence on the 
part of the Church, upon the plea that while slavery is a sin, it is 
also a political institution, and the most we can therefore do as a 
Church or a Tract Society is to generalize very piously about the 
moral duties of masters growing out of its existence. 

In this guilty silence of his churches and ministers, God may 
employ the so-called infidelity of Parker, or the alleged violence 
of Garrison, and the fury of reformers out of the Church, stigma- 
tized as fanatical, to do that which His own people refuse to per- 
form. And he may crush some of the dearest present organiza- 
tions and instrumentalities of the Church under the weight of their 
sins of omission, and their refusing to remember them that are in 
bonds as bound with them. Any way, God the Almighty will de- 
stroy slavery, and if we, his ministers and people, will not wield 
the battle-axe of his word against it, we had better stand from 
under. 

" It has been to me (says one) a most affecting illustration of 
God's providence, that He has employed the talents of infidel 
writers, from the deistical Jefferson, to the bold infidelity of Theo- 
dore Parker, in the work of emancipation, and that too, with sig- 
nal success. Jehu executed God's judgments upon the house of 
Ahab, and he had his temporal reward, but he took no heed to 
walk in the ways of God. Garrison and his associates are sending 
a cry through the land, which ought to have swelled from the hill- 



18 

tops of our Zion, and they are fulfilling tlie work of the Church, 
while, at the same time, they scourge and deride that Church, 
whose members go up to her Sabbaths, her solemn feasts, and her 
holy places of communion, with garments dipped with blood. I 
say it with unspeakable grief, but with the most solemn conviction 
of its truth, that the attitude of the American Church, in regard 
to slavery, has thrown a stumbling-block in the way, over which 
numbers have plunged into hopeless infidelity." * 

But it is objected, again, that slavery is not necessarily a sin, 
per se, and to hold, as a principle, no fellowship with slaveholders, 
is not warranted by reason or the Scriptures. The reasonable- 
ness and scripturalness of such a course we have already argued 
at sufficient length, and it would be enough to say here that under 
this weakest and most idealess metaphysical subterfuge of crimen 
per se, or delictum per se, many hide from themselves the enormity 
of slavery. 

But I meet the objection directly, by saying that slavery or 
slaveholding is a sin per se, as murder is sin per se, as theft is 
sin per se. There may be cases of apparent slaveholding, in 
which there is no sin per se, because there is no real slavery, inas- 
much as the apparent slaveholder, acknowledging that he can not, 
in the sight of God, hold property in man, is really an emanci- 
pator, only subject to the relation of slaveholder in the eye of the 
law, while he is seeking to place those called his slaves under the 
protection of the laws of freedom, and fully endow them with all 
the liberties which he acknowledges are theirs by right. 

So there are cases of apparent murder and theft, which are not 
sins per se, because they are not sins at all, the alleged murderer 
or thief being only so in the eye of the law, but not in the view of 
God. Yet who for that stumbles at the question, Whether murder 
and theft are sinsjaer se f or hesitates to condemn those crimes as 
they deserve'? A man may be a nominal slaveholder for the 
moment, from necessity, and yet be guiltless before God of the 
crime of slaveholding. So a murderer, in the judgment of man, 
may be acquitted at the bar of God. In both these cases a false 
judgment exists. There is neither slaveholding nor murder in 
cither case. 

But when a man kills another from malice, it is murder, and that 
murder is sin per se. So when a man holds slaves for gain or ser- 
vice to himself, without wages, it is essential injustice and fraud, 
and that slaveholding is sin^e/ 1 se. 

* Slavery aud the Church: Two Letters to N. L. Rice, D.D. By Smectymnus. 
Boston: 1856. 



19 

He who holds slaves for his own gain, as his property, to in- 
crease his own wealth thereby, or in any way to promote his own 
selfish and personal ends, he is as truly guilty of injustice, and of 
singer se, as if he were a convicted and common thief, and he is 
all the more guilty beeanse the rights of which he robs the slave 
are so much more precious than gold, or than any other property 
that can be stolen. Yet a single act of common robbery dooms 
the thief to the State prison, Avhile a system and series of pro- 
tracted robberies and actual deprivation of the inalienable rights 
of man, is justified and defended, has the fellowship of the Church, 
and is no bar to honor and respectability in so-called Christian 
society. 

This ought not so to be, for sin is sin, and right is right, inde- 
pendently of times, judgments, and opinions, or the number and 
moral weight of the sinners, or the popularity and power of the 
sin.* And the Church of Christ, and its ministers, above all other 
men, are solemnly bound to say so. It is the unwillingness of 
Christian men in the Church, and of doctors of divinity, so to stig- 
matize American Slavery, and to affirm, as the ground of all anti- 
slavery action, its inherent and unalterable sinfulness, that has 
shorn them of all their power in the warfare with this gigantic 
wrong, and has hitherto kept by far the most important reform of 
the age out of the hands of the Church. Nothing can be done 
effectively for the overthrow of this towering wickedness, till the 
absolute sinfulness of slavery be asserted as the only reason for 
meddling with it at all in the Church, or by any of its organiza- 
tions, like the Tract Society or Board of Missions. All attempts 
to abolish or pare away the difference between Right and Wrong, 
between Christ and Belial, or to split a distinction Avhere there is 
not a difference between common morality and reformatory 
morality, or to compromise with the sj^stem of slavery by with- 
holding an expression of its inherent sinfulness, will end in utter 
defeat and ignominy to the compromising party, while on the other 
hand, a present failure, on the broad and sure ground of principle, 
will be a future success. It is a remark of Hardcastle, that God 
does not allow us to part with an inch of his ground, though we 
might thereby gain the peaceful possession of all the rest — a 
maxim which some of the non-committal and compromising doc- 

* In a Fast Day Sermon by Dr. Leonard Bacon, there occurs this passage : " The 
man, whoever he may be, whatever titles he may bear, whatever maybe his honors 
in the State or Church, who by affirming the rightfulness of slavery, confounds the 
moral sense, and subverts all moral distinctions — I denounce as a criminal against 
our common humanity, and wittingly or unwittingly an enemy of Christ." 



20 

tors of the day would do well to study iu its bearings upon 
slavery. 

But we hear it objected again to the refusal of Church-fellow- 
ship to supporters of slavery, that it is siding with the fierce 
fanaticism and denunciatory temper of a godless party outside the 
Church, and that we do not make allowance enough for our 
Southern brethren, born and reared iu slavery. 

This objection has two parts to it. To the first we reply that 
it has been mainly on account of the blamable neglect of duty by 
the ministry and the Church, that the party of humanity outside 
the Church has become so strong. It is to the shame of the 
Church, that the foremost men in some of our philanthropic 
movements, in the interpretation of the spirit of the age, in the 
practical applications of Christianity, in the reformation of abuses, 
in the vindication of the rights of man, are men who make no pro- 
fession of Christianity, and whom the Church does not acknow- 
ledge as having experienced its power. 

The Church has tamely left not merely the working-oar, but the 
very rudder and reins of certain necessary reforms of the day in 
the hands of men, who, if not before inimical to the organizations 
of Christianity, are in danger of being made so by the current 
Christianity's neglect of what it is its proper mission to look after. 
They are doing practically, witli all their might, for humanity's 
sake, what the Church ought to be doing every where as heartily, 
through its ministry and representative men, for Christ's sake. 
And what will become of our religious organizations when irre- 
ligious men get ahead of the Church in morals, and in the practi- 
cal work of Christianity?* In some instances they are already a 

* While there is advantage, there is also clanger from the reaction of Christianized 
sensibility upon Christianity. Alas for the Church, when men not religious, by 
force of nature, or the tendency of the age, are found iu advance of the Church in 
the true exemplification of Christianity. A writer in the North British Review 
truly remarks that Christianity in our times has done much more to refine the senti- 
ments of nations, than to reform their morals. " The wide diffusion of a purified 
Christianity on the surface of society, and the indirect influence of the refinement 
of tastes which results from it, especially among the cultivated classes, is generating 
infidelity and pantheism among us silently, but to a great extent. Two hundred 
years ago, the great truths of the Gospel beat strong in the trunk-arteries; but had 
not sent fine feelings and a fine complexion to the surface of man's moral nature 
But now the result of the expected and desired diffusion of Christianity in highly 
civilized countries, under its present aspect of a mild, purifying, but powerless in- 
fluence, is an antagonist reaction from Christianized sensibility upon Christianity 
itself; and which must bring about, unless the course of things be early arrested, 
the substitution, silently, of a Christianized pantheism." 



long ways ahead of the very oracles of orthodoxy. We might 
specify individuals and journals in this country that are far before 
the recognized organs and exponents of the Church, in the advo- 
cacy of righteousness and liberty. It is easy to see how much 
more, both of disgrace and of danger, there is in a fact like 
this, than there is in the objected siding of the Church with an 
alleged godless party outside of it. The Church should be wher- 
ever and with whomsoever the truth is, humanity is, and virtual 
Christianity is. We should not even love Christianity before and 
above the truth, but only as it is the truth, and because it is the 
truth. He, says Coleridge, who begins by loving Christianity bet- 
ter than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church bet- 
ter than Christianity; and end in loving himself better than al'. 

As to the second part of the objection, it is so put as to imply 
that our brethren in the South, born and reared under Slavery, are 
better able to judge of the right and wrong of it than we are, who 
are separated from it. As if a man must be a sinner in the very 
act, in order to have the truest discernment of what is sinful. Or 
as if it were sinning in a matter that made one a better judge 
of its sinfulness, than being without sin in the matter : an argu- 
ment which would make Satan, with his long experience in wrong- 
doing only, a more a suitable judge of right and wrong, than 
Gabriel, with his long experience in doing right only. 

What sensible man would admit such reasoning on any other 
subject a moment? And yet it is not in the least more justifiable 
on the subject of slavery, the nature and effects of which on slave, 
holders are such, that they can not be in a fit state to judge of its 
moral bearings, until they come out from it, and are set free from 
its inevitable perversions and biases. We need to throw off, or in 
some way to get unloosed from the meshes of our own error and 
sophistry, before we can unravel its entanglements, or find out how 
they came to be wound around us. 

Hence it is that we at the North, disconnected for the most part 
personally with slavery, and somewhat removed from the immedi- 
ate sphere of its depraving influence, are better able to judge of 
the right and wrong of the system, are in a better state for the 
weighing of argument and evidence, and applying to slavery the 
test of the Bible, than it is possible for our Southern pro-slavery 
brethren to be. We owe it therefore, to them as a duty, to do 
out utmost, by calm moral argumentation, by protest, by admo- 
nition and rebuke, and finally by the withdrawment of our fellow- 
ship as Christians, to convince them of the wrongfulness of their 



22 

position and practice, and if possible, as possible it certainly is, to 
reach the Southern conscience, if there be one, or to make a con- 
science, upon the subject of slavery where it is wanting, by the 
continued reiteration of the law of God, and the principles of 
eternal justice. 

Our brethren at the South, perhaps I may say Southern society 
throughout, are just now in the state of passengers who have been 
spending a long night on the Sound, in the vitiated cabin-air of 
one of our steamboats. They feel restless, languid, feverish, and 
ill at ease with their slavery, and yet they know not why. But 
let them come up on deck, into the breezy morning air of liberty, 
let them snuft* awhile the invigorating breath of freedom, and then 
let them attempt to go down again into the foul atmosphere of 
slavery, where they worried through the night, and they will 
quickly learn what made them so uneasy. 

And yet, forsooth, the South still below there under the hatches 
of slavery, will call to us upon deck that their air is as good as 
ours ; and while inhaling at every breath the noxious gases and 
exhalations that have become so natural to them that they like 
them, they will gravely contend that they are better able to judge 
of the moral bearings of slavery than we are who do not know 
what slavery is, because we have not been born and bred in it. 

But are we of the North to concede for a moment that the air 
of Slavery is as good as that of Freedom ? By no means. Rather 
let us keep pumping into the exhausted and feculent atmosphere 
of the South and its apostate Church, the vital oxygen of moral 
truth, by our continued act and testimony against slavery. As an 
expression of this, we would advocate the adoption, by Associations, 
of Ministers and by General Conferences, of a preamble and reso- 
lutions for substance like these : 

Whereas, The American Church South, as represented in the 
ecclesiastical bodies of the various denominations, have, with the 
exception of some small bodies of Christians, plainly become apos- 
tate from the faith of the fathers, and from the teachings of God's 
word in reference to the great moral wrong of slavery, therefore 

Resolved, That we, as representing a part of the American 
Church, are solemnly bound to rebuke our apostate brethren of 
the South in love, by that precept of the Divine Word which 
says : Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart ; thou shalt in 
any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him. 

Resolved, That, as a proof of our love, and as a divinely-ordained 
and Christian method of correction, we will withhold from them 
the ordinary signs of Christian fellowship, till they repent, and 



m 



23 

return to the faith of the fathers, and to the word of God, upon 
the great practical question of the rights of man, and the duty of 
the Church to them that are in bonds. 

And we would recommend to each individual Church North, to 
take ecclesiastical action in shape as follows : 

Whereas, It is the solemn duty of those who claim to be follow- 
ers of Christ and members of his Church, to make an uncompro- 
mising application of the principles of the Gospel to all sin, and 
especially to enforce a rigid Christian discipline against the un- 
christian practice of slaveholding, and whatever gives its sanction 
to the wicked slave-system, therefore 

Resolved, That no slaveholder shall be allowed to be a member 
of this Church, or to participate in its communion ; and that this 
Church hereby refuses fellowship with any Church or Religious 
Body that tolerates and defends slavery, and refuses to bring its 
discipline to bear against so heinous a sin. 



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